Category: music

Classical musicians are probably the most-trained of any musician. But that still doesn’t mean they can make the switch to jazz. Big-time classical musicians talk about why making the crossover is risky business. – Chicago Sun-Times

“No conductor since Karajan has achieved brand-name recognition on record – with one exception. Nikolaus Harnoncourt is a Habsburg by blood, a descendant of Holy Roman emperors, who used to earn his crust as a back-row cellist in Vienna’s second orchestra until he decided that he knew better than most maestros how classical music should sound.” – The Telegraph (UK)

In Europe Kent Nagano is a rising star, the “unassuming hero” of the Salzburg Festival and director of the Hallé Orchestra. So why, when America’s major orchestras seem to be having difficulty finding music directors, do they not consider the 49-year-old American? – New York Times

John Moran’s “operas” stretch the form. Not just for the odd subject matter, or that the pieces are performed by theatre rather than opera companies. In Moran’s operas, the performers don’t sing. “What they lip-sync is mostly speech, from which Mr. Moran teases melody by repeating phrases and fragments until the shapes of their inflections are as familiar as what is being said.” – New York Times

Composer/conductor/educator/horn player Gunther Schuller is turning 75 and writing a memoir of his life. But he’s only at his 19th year and already he’s written 250 pages. “I spent about four pages just describing what was available on the radio in the way of classical music. I am self-taught in everything except the French horn, and the radio is one of the ways how I learned so much music. I had to do some research because I had forgotten how much there really was, and I was flabbergasted; it helps explain things about me and others like me. There was no excuse for anybody’s being culturally illiterate, as most Americans are today.” – Boston Globe

James Levine is in his 30th year at the Metropolitan Opera. “The man is simply wedded to the job. He even speaks the way he conducts, in long, flawlessly constructed paragraphs. He pays attention to verbal detail, too, rather as he might with some orchestral point in rehearsal, pausing to find just the right word or phrase to express what he wants to communicate. And then there is also, unmistakably, a certain personal reserve, a distancing that is sometimes a feature of his performances, a sense of his own importance that is conveyed by a reluctance to talk in depth about anything except conducting.” – The Guardian

Pop music and politicians just do not mix. “Perhaps that’s the way it should be. Pop groups are meant to offend the establishment, not cosy up to it.” – The Independent (UK)

“Venice was once one of the great European musical capitals, a city whose leaders recognised the power of cultural prestige and took care to attract and encourage composers of the calibre of Monteverdi and Vivaldi. It became a centre whose excellence in performance at its churches and the famous foundling hospitals which trained musicians made it a site of pilgrimage. The effect of decades of mass tourism in recent years has been to diminish the quality and range of concerts.” – The Independent (UK)

Last Saturday night Donald Trump flew some friends to Atlantic City to hear Pavarotti at the Taj Mahal hotel. But Pavarotti was not in good voice and the show was not very good. “So outraged was Trump that, after the show, he made his way backstage and demanded that the singer refund him at least half his money.” Pavarotti refused but apologized and offered to do another show soon. – National Post (Canada)

The Philadelphia Orchestra turns 100. “Only the orchestras of Berlin, Vienna, Cleveland and Chicago can claim to be competing on as high a level. And yet, the orchestra continues to operate in the same state of institutional uncertainty that has plagued it for the last six or seven years.” – Philadelphia Inquirer